The White River and Northern Model Railroad: Clinic

	The N Scale

	Model Railroad

Striking a Balance in Detail

People notice details. They not only draw attention, but they increase realism by giving structures a lived-in feeling and a sense of history. The nice thing is that you don't have to load up your models with tons of details to make them lifelike and interesting; just a few scattered here and there will create the illusion that an object has more detail than it actually does. (In fact, I believe that it is possible to go overboard; I might get flamed for this, but I happen to think George Sellios overdoes detailing.)

These two very ordinary structures, seen here in the "sweet light" of late afternoon, get a lot of attention from visitors because of their details. Some of the most effective details, I think, are those placed in unusual locations, and it seems building roofs are too often neglected. Perhaps this is because we don't see many of them in real life; in the model world, rooftops are more easily inspected, and so we ought not overlook such detailing opportunities.

For instance, up on the roof of the left building is a woman tending a garden. Simple blocks of styrene glued to palettes are topped with ground foam; a tiny bit of foam is attached to her hand as if she had just plucked a sprig from one of her plants. Atop the right building is a line of laundry. This is a classic detail most often modeled in backyards, but in life they appear on rooftops, too. This one was clipped from a Preiser figure set and bonded to a length of fine wire; the wires are strung between a pair of etched brass HO lift rings filled in with solder and glued into holes in the chimney and the roof access. The etched brass skylight, by the way, is illuminated.

Gold Medal Models makes a lot of nice detail items, including TV antennas. When you're adding aerials, think about taking the concept further: some will be beat up and bent; some are anodized with gold or blue color (use a Sharpie to color them); and some are on rotators. A small chunk of styrene strip stock, drilled to accept two wires, creates a fine rotator—you can see one in the upper center of the top photo.

Other things to notice: old rooftops are messy places. Usually there is tar slopped everywhere as leaks are plugged and re-plugged over the years. Also, Design Preservation Models chimneys have solid caps; just drilling holes and adding some soot improves them immensely.

Windows are ripe for details like drapes, fans and air conditioners. For businesses, there is no end to the possibilities for different kinds of signage. Windows themselves can be detailed, too: leave a few open, and board one or two up. A couple of broken panes (knife point scratches) or some dirt (a light misting of Testors Dull Cote) are nice touches. Even simple window shades (strips of masking tape) can go a long way to enhance the realism of a structure.

Light can catch your eye and draw you into a whole little world behind a single window. I created a table lamp by inserting a microbulb into a bit of styrene tubing, then ran the leads through a hole in a table (a small square of styrene); finally, I placed a couple of tiny objects on the table. What are they? Who knows? It doesn't matter. Never hurts to keep people guessing.

Down at the street level there is frequently a great deal of visual clutter in life. Simple everyday objects are commercially available to instantly add this to a scene, including fire hydrants, mail boxes, trash cans and, of course, people. This is where some folks can get a little carried away, appearing to follow the logic that, if a little clutter is good, a lot is great. However, not only are there places in life devoid of clutter, but our models need some of them to give the eye resting places, as well as to allow areas of detail to catch and focus our attention on scenes of genuine interest.

As an example, on this street the area having the greatest density of detail, and hence the greatest level of interest, is the entrance to the corner bar (as is usually the case in real life!). The only thing I chose not to include in this scene was litter, since it tends to look more like a mistake than trash in N scale. I hinted at it by giving the scene a generally seedy, run-down appearance: the walls of the entrance to the bar are covered with detritus—bits of paper cut from reduced photocopies, some tinted with pale-colored markers to simulate old, faded posters. The buildings also have a patina of grime consisting of an India ink wash and chalk dust, as well as a chipped brick here and there (created with the flick of a knife tip).

Some details are subtle, and lurk in the back of the mind to heighten realism almost on a subconscious level. Most folks don't notice the "no parking" yellow paint on the curb at the corner, or the rust on the mailbox, until you point it out to them. Far less obvious is the pole in front of the bar door... The model is based on a real place I used to frequent in my youth, which had a pole in front of the door that countless people would grab with their hands as they passed; over the years this caused a dark ring of grunge to accumulate, which I reproduced on the model.

A different bar I used to drive past had a sign mounted to the brick wall that was quite similar to JB's; it had a visible wire that ran out of the bottom of the sign and down the wall to a light fixture over the door. Look closely at the bottom of the model sign (here is a close-up) and you'll spot the same wire. I'm also often a stickler when it comes to what is physically feasible. For example, the opening for the bar entrance has horizontal steel members along the lower edges of the walls (strip styrene) to support the brick, which would be a necessity in the real world. The details one finds in real life can provide an endless supply of modeling ideas.

When adding figures to a scene, I choose them carefully and try to arrange them such that they suggest some kind of interaction; this sparks the imaginations of visitors. There will undoubtedly be a variety of thoughts that run through the minds of people who observe the couple in the last photo on the right—note that the petulant-looking girl is facing away from the haughty-looking guy. What's going on? Inquiring minds want to know!

Fire escapes are popular detail items. Only months before Gold Medal Models introduced their etched brass fire escape kits, I went to great pains to scratchbuild my own using modified etched brass parts of all sorts, plus various sizes of wire.

The main railing assemblies were created by clipping the horizontal mullions out of a dozen or so windows (the cross points were deliberately left in place to add an ornate effect), then soldering them together like a strand of tree lights. The stairs are three ladders soldered into a slightly staggered sandwich. The floor grating was made from pieces of freight car roof walks soldered together like floor tiles. The counterweight pulley for the drop-down ladder is an HO brakewheel. And the support brackets are formed wire.

In the end I didn't mind all the extra effort since, while they are nice, the GMM kits lack much of the detail I included in mine, such as the inner railings around the stair openings, the extra support brackets, and so on (I used a number of reference photos to get it right). Notice the two potted plants sitting behind the stairs on the lower landing.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; there are a number of lighting and animation articles that reveal some of the many other details on these structures, including:

You can also see videos of the animated effects.

Image specs: These images were captured with a Canon 20D digital SLR and a 50mm prime lens plus various extension tube combinations. Digital processing was done on the two roof shots to minimize distracting background clutter.

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